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NJPW Anniversary Event 2018


Raziel

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Naito broke his singing stick, will Taichi now change his entrance or will he simply buy a new one? I think this is most important question coming out of this event. Anyway, when this match was announced I was expecting them to take their TakaTaichiMania match, change some things, fix this or that small detail and do it again. Nope, they did different match which I ended up liking even more. I'm really interested to see what Tanahashi/Taichi match will be like. Also, hearing audience chant "Lets go Taichi" was very weird experience.

And yeah, I do care and I think that Tanahashi should probably win it, but Taichi would be deserving of that victory. In a way it could also send a message that Tanahashi ain't winning this and he ain't getting his revenge because second (third?) in command just dropped him. Or it could result in same scenario as last year with Tanahashi later getting his win back and challenging Suzuki anyway. Either way they got options here and I like that.

Speaking about people who deserve something... how good was Yoshi-Hashi in this? I probably will change my opinion later, but right now I feel like he needs to win against Ibushi.

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Yoshi-Hashi desperately needs to beat Ibushi if they want to elevate him past pin-eater... but it's really beginning to feel like they don't want to do that. Especially when contrasted with Ibushi's rising star (ha, sorry), I don't like his odds; but the cup gets weird, so who knows? He was really good today, though, fighting like someone who needed to beat SANADA, who fought like someone who was content his base superiority would win the day. It did, and the match was good, but that's the perpetual meta narrative tension with SANADA: How much telegraphed apathy is character, and does it matter? I want to love you, man, just invite me.

To that "cup is random" point: I kinda think ZSJ's beating Naito, because I'm a mark and Taka sold me; but also, Suzuki-gun now has motivation to interfere a crazy amount, and LIJ really doesn't bother helping Naito cheat anymore.

As for MiSu himself, I liked his defense against Makabe more than I expected to; but I'm still mostly excited that it's out of the way, and he can wrestle basically anyone else, now. (Other than Naito, for whom the IC title would feel like a step back/character contradiction.)

I still need to watch Ospreay/Okada, because I had to go in to work early; but I'm posting about the card already because I'm at work. Funny.

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I think Suzuki and Makabe have always have a fair bit of chemistry and Makabe shines better when working with people from a more old school background, I seem to recall him working openers with Shibata when they were starting out that were pretty good.

YOSHI-HASHI did what he always does - came out looking like a nerd and worked hard for our love, only for it to be forgotten in a few weeks.

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It's amazing to hear the way the air goes out of the crowd when Okada hits the spinning tombstone now.  As arguably devalued as the Rainmaker has become, EVERYBODY knows its academic when he hits that move.

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I bitch a lot about goofy gaijin. but I come around on most of them. I came around on Kenny, I've come around on the Bucks (really looking forward to their working from the bottom in HW tags), even Marty Scurll's starting to be redeemed by his above-average acting chops and character work - I'm at a point where I can stand him in the right tag.

Will Ospreay? I have no idea. I'm so baffled as to what this guy brings to the table. His yelps are insufferable, he botches a lot of his go-to spots, his look is awful, his finisher is as convoluted as anything (just used the damn 450), there's no character to speak of. I know that I've enjoyed isolated singles matches of his but usually because I enjoyed whatever KUSHIDA/Takahashi/Whoever was doing. I made the mistake of posting on the reddit wrestling board about how I thought Okada/Ospreay was the third best match on the card and was promptly downvoted for not thinking Ospreay is Top Five in the World. I knew I was out of touch, but damn...

On a positive note I had high hopes for Heavyweight Taichi and I was not let down. I remembered the promise he once showed as the AJPW whipping boy and Kawada devotee - or maybe I'm getting him confused with Kazushi Miyamoto. Anyways. Hope he lights it up in the G1 as a heel who can actually go.

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Heavyweight Taichi is the best thing. That was a spectacular match all around and it wasn't just Naito carrying Taichi either. I hope his absolute baseline is the cheating version of what YOSHI-HASHI's been the past few years but instead of surprising guys with flash falls or whatever, he kicks them in the balls really hard. Honestly, he deserves much better though.

Makabe/Suzuki had some clunkiness to it, but I wasn't expecting ballet.

YOSHI-HASHI needs to freelance or join another promotion if he has any aspirations of being anything other than fodder. He's fine but I feel like he's even regressed a little since his surprisingly very good 2016 G1 Climax. There are other people that should start getting featured in singles matches this guy has been getting.

I think my favourite part of the main event was Okada going move for move with Will in the English wrestling opening 5 minutes. Was good but I expected more. The crowd popped for Will's offence but didn't really get behind him all that much when he was getting dominated.

@John E. Dynamite, I enjoyed Taichi/Naito way more than the main event and thought the other two singles matches were not far behind Okada/Ospreay. Not a crazy statement at all.

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What's going on with Okada and Naito right now kinda reminds me of when Austin and the Rock were at the height of their powers  in the WWF.  Only one guy could hold the belt, but the crowd was still always red hot for whatever the other was doing in the undercard at the time.  Any fears that Naito would be damaged by losing at WK should be put to rest after seeing how molten that crowd was for a match against a glorified job guy with a less than zero chance of winning.

Hopefully Taichi will make more of the rub than YOSHI-HASHI, who is already D.O.A. with the crowd again.

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Watched and enjoyed Okada/Ospreay. Okada’s greatest strength as champ has been his ability to have the other guy’s match, showcase his strengths, and then (somehow) beat him in his element without making the loser look like one. This was a case, though, where I’d have liked Okada to take the reigns more—which, yeah, would have meant reigning Ospreay in a bit, whose indulgences I never really like. I just didn’t need... quite so much. But Oyaji is right that the crowd loved Ospreay on offense, so idk. It was fun for an exhibition, the outcome of which was never in doubt, and the crowd helped. Singing Ospreay’s name at the start was genuinely really cool.

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18 minutes ago, Beech27 said:

Watched and enjoyed Okada/Ospreay. Okada’s greatest strength as champ has been his ability to have the other guy’s match, showcase his strengths, and then (somehow) beat him in hisnelement without making the loser look like one. This was a case, though, where I’d have liked Okada to take the reigns more—which, yeah, would have meant reigning Ospreay in a bit, whose indulgences I never really like. I just didn’t need... quite so much. But Oyaji is right that the crowd loved Ospreay on offense, so idk. It was fun for an exhibition, the outcome of which was never in doubt, and the crowd helped. Singing Ospreay’s name at the start was genuinely really cool.

Yeah, I like that match well enough, but this was another one of those situations where Okada's chameleon game of working the other guy's match backfired because the other guy's match is kinda shitty.  Give him another year or two, and I figure he'll have developed whatever sense is required to be more discerning in who he gives matches to and who he takes them from.  This match needed Okada to be the boss.

It also needed to highlight the heavy/junior dynamic more.  I mean, Ospreay lifts Okada with a waist lock takedown like its nothing within the first 15 seconds of the match.  Sure, Okada's athleticism at 6'3" 230 is part of what makes him special, but you'd never guess he had 50 pounds over Ospreay based on this match.  The way they worked it actually made Okada feel smaller instead of making Ospreay feel bigger.

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That was something Taichi's match did a great job of pointing out. He powered out of the Destino and he was slamming Naito around with huge, power moves. He's a big boy now. I really hope he comes back with an all new and improved mic. The world needs that horrendous lip syncing and Miho's maudlin routine!

I think I'll put the main event on the list of New Japan matches I should rewatch because I was in and out in the middle portion of the match and watched it in English, breaking my own rule of switching over to Japanese for the big matches. I probably missed some stuff, but I felt Ospreay actually didn't do enough to draw out his strengths of agility and risk taking compared to Okada's war of attrition approach. But you guys are saying the match had too much self-indulgence, so yeah... Probably missed some important stuff without realizing it. I'd like to go back to the Ibushi/Tanahashi IC match from November for the same reason and the Ishii/Tanahashi match because I was so emotionally crestfallen due to Ibushi's loss earlier in the show all but eliminating him. 

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6 hours ago, John E. Dynamite said:

Will Ospreay? I have no idea. I'm so baffled as to what this guy brings to the table. His yelps are insufferable, he botches a lot of his go-to spots, his look is awful, his finisher is as convoluted as anything (just used the damn 450), there's no character to speak of. I know that I've enjoyed isolated singles matches of his but usually because I enjoyed whatever KUSHIDA/Takahashi/Whoever was doing. I made the mistake of posting on the reddit wrestling board about how I thought Okada/Ospreay was the third best match on the card and was promptly downvoted for not thinking Ospreay is Top Five in the World. I knew I was out of touch, but damn...

Top reason why I don't post anything on reddit. It just looks like my tastes are completely different to theirs. Thou I also have a conspiracy theory that lots of reddit posters don't actually watch wrestling shows, instead they watch wrestling gifs in which wrestlers like Ospreay always look cool. I base this crazy conspiracy on posts that write about the match like they know what happened in it, but miss so many important things that make me think that he either watched the gifs or read results somewhere, and they get ton of upvotes. To stretch my conspiracy theory even further I think that this might be one of the reasons why there is this popular myth going on that Japanese crowds are silent despite most crowds getting hot when they see something they really like/dislike. Gifs don't have sound, after all.

6 hours ago, Oyaji said:

I think my favourite part of the main event was Okada going move for move with Will in the English wrestling opening 5 minutes. Was good but I expected more. The crowd popped for Will's offence but didn't really get behind him all that much when he was getting dominated.

Mat wrestling opener was my "oh I really like this, but this is completely stupid" moment. I love Zack, Kushida (heck, I don't mind Scurll when he is actually doing that, I don't like his other "cool" spots) and I like mat wrestling in general, but I don't understand why it is used sometimes like this (I remember last Ospreay and Ricochet in BotSJ match having same start). For me it is a valid style of wrestling and if someone is good at it he should be top contender. So here we have two guys that don't use this style at all suddenly opening the match with that, why? I understand when someone does it when facing Zack, you want to show that you can hang in his element, cool, good for you, you will hang in for 3 minutes and then you should revert back to your element once you realize that this is not a fight you can win like this. And I can somewhat understand why Okada would do it, when facing Ospreay it makes sense to ground him, but why in the hell Ospreay would be doing that? Only reason is that Ospreay wants to show that he is well rounded wrestler and silence his critics saying that he is just a glorified spot monkey. And for me it does the opposite. Problem with him is really not his high spots, but what he does in between them, replacing some of your early high spots with mat wrestling doesn't change the fact that nothing good (or interesting) happens in between those sequences.

And I think thats why crowds usually don't get behind him very strongly. I think it is close to impossible to not-react when he is doing some of his spots, but his selling is rather bad (those screams when someone does something to him instantly take me out of the match for example) and as mentioned before he doesn't really do anything worth caring about in-between his spots.

2 hours ago, EVA said:

It also needed to highlight the heavy/junior dynamic more.  I mean, Ospreay lifts Okada with a waist lock takedown like its nothing within the first 15 seconds of the match.  Sure, Okada's athleticism at 6'3" 230 is part of what makes him special, but you'd never guess he had 50 pounds over Ospreay based on this match.  The way they worked it actually made Okada feel smaller instead of making Ospreay feel bigger.

Good point, after the match I saw some comments that Ospreay should be moving to heavyweights and it makes sense based on this match since nothing really showed here why Ospreay is junior. He is high flyer? Sure, but so is Omega/Ibushi/Naito when compared to people like Makabe and Goto. Okada can't overpower him easily so what disadvantage Ospreay really has?

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Ospreay is really good technically and isn't just a high flying spot monkey. It absolutely made sense for him to do that for a number of reasons. Primarily because he and Okada are stablemates and aren't going to be coming out gunning with each other. Another reason could be it's not a style Okada sees often and Ospreay is more than competent at (he wrestled this style against Shibata last February to great effect), so he could try to throw Okada off his game. But Okada is a god and went stride for stride and hold for hold with Will. As you said, it could be to surprise Okada, but Okada knows he's a good mat wrestler, making the 50/50 outcome make all the more sense.

I also thought he showed a lot of the little things/in between things in this match. Look at his intensity when before he goes for the short-arm clothesline. He's learning to show more intensity in his matches the past year or so. He's still got some work to do here but he's not as bad as he once was. I really enjoy his character work as a heel, such as his later Progress work. Grade A piece of shit. I enjoy his shrieks of pain from time to time. He may have overdone it a bit on today's show but it's something different.

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4 hours ago, EVA said:

Yeah, I like that match well enough, but this was another one of those situations where Okada's chameleon game of working the other guy's match backfired because the other guy's match is kinda shitty.  Give him another year or two, and I figure he'll have developed whatever sense is required to be more discerning in who he gives matches to and who he takes them from.  This match needed Okada to be the boss.

It also needed to highlight the heavy/junior dynamic more.  I mean, Ospreay lifts Okada with a waist lock takedown like its nothing within the first 15 seconds of the match.  Sure, Okada's athleticism at 6'3" 230 is part of what makes him special, but you'd never guess he had 50 pounds over Ospreay based on this match.  The way they worked it actually made Okada feel smaller instead of making Ospreay feel bigger.

 

Jr. limit in NJ is 220 and Ospreay is pretty close to that.   I didn't have an issue with Ospreay using strength some, esp since Okada showed better strength with the early knucklelocks.   I think they're grooming Ospreay to eventually go heavy.

 

I really enjoyed heavy Taichi, and Suzuki-gun does need a legit heavyweight other than Minoru.   I kinda expect an eternal Taichi/Yano feud for some reason.

 

 

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If we go by billed weight, Okada is 236, and Ospreay is 174. I know wrestling is wresting, but these strike me as two of the more believable numbers out there; either way, Ospreay ain't close to 220. That said, I find the "smaller guy should always get bossed around by bigger guy" line of criticism really reductive and tired, so I try not to hold that against this match; but I did think it was an opportunity for Okada the Ace, whom we've seen more of recently, to really shine.

I thought the opening was a bit too cute, but I get it--it's an exhibition! they're friends!--and the crowd liked it. From there, the bones of the story were pretty classic "things get heated, escalate, moves become Moves become MOVES, then someone wins"; Ospreay just got to put too much meat on those bones for my tastes. Which, to be fair, he's not a favorite of mine. If you replace him with Hiromu, leave in all the physical and vocal ticks, strike trading and power moves, I probably love it. My bias is there, for sure. And if you wanted to make the case Ospreay was more concerned with showing he could hang than winning, that Okada drew him into those deep waters, I'd listen. Another criticism I dislike is "Wrestler A employed a losing strategy, and lost, so the match was stupid", so I'm trying not to do that here.

I guess you could also view the whole thing as Okada's counterpoint to Switchblade's antagonism. He can wrestle someone from Chaos, have a competitive match, but not indulge the more arrogant and violent shades he's shown against others.

(Having been fair, though, and also having watched the match I second time... I still don't like it more than after my first viewing, which puts it firmly in good-not-great territory, for me. But that's fine. It's nearly non-canon and the crowd loved it, the internet is excited, etc.)

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Naito piling pressure on Taichi to beat Tanahashi in the Cup. As much as I want Tanahashi to win, I am so on board for the Taichi nutshot and Gedo Clutch win. New Japan usually is ruthless with workers returning from injury too.

Miho Abe is amazing at looking forlorn. It's like her one facial expression.

Edit: ooooh, shit! Suzuki was pissed he isn't in the main event while the other two guys were "playing". In the ring, he referenced somebody "up there, stepping on me", referencing Okada. He was less subtle in calling out Little Kazu in the back.

Guy is probably the best promo in wrestling right now.

Edited by Oyaji
MiSu
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